SNP listening exercise means shut up and listen

“Shut up, I’m listening to you.” That was the inspirational message delivered this morning by Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, at the launch in Stirling of the SNP’s latest Conversation, or “listening exercise”, with the people of Scotland. Since the eventual outcome of the previous Conversation was a 55-45 referendum victory for Unionism, this is good news for the Union.

Sassenach readers should understand that in the SNP lexicon “conversation” is defined as an old Scots word meaning “monologue by separatists”. Nicola Sturgeon does not do dialogue, hence the Great Listener’s refusal today to take questions from the press. Sturgeon advisers were at pains to emphasise that by wearing earphones the First Minister was able notionally to listen in Gaelic as well.

Under SNP hegemony Scottish politics has degenerated into a pantomime that defies parody. The challenge for Sturgeon is to persuade the public she is waving, not drowning. The Scottish deficit is now an intractable £15 billion. This year’s oil revenue amounts to £60m (don’t knock it, you could build a new wing on a cottage hospital with that). So, what do you do when oil is worth peanuts? Simple: you ban fracking.

Sturgeon is hoist with her own petard, by having made hubristic promises she has no possibility of keeping. She vowed, rather contradictorily, to stop Brexit and to keep Scotland separately in the EU: one would have thought the first pledge rendered the second otiose. But the real nightmare in which she is trapped is her pretended enthusiasm for a second, post-Brexit, independence referendum.

This is itself a breach of the Sturgeon Doctrine, that a second referendum should only be held after Yes sentiment has enjoyed an unassailable lead in the polls for at least a year. Sturgeon’s gamble was that a victory for Brexit would provoke a massive reaction in Scotland, producing a convincing majority for independence. That did not happen.

In the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote three Scottish opinion polls were published. Two Survation polls showed 54 per cent support for independence (omitting Don’t Knows), the other 53 per cent. A Panelbase poll put Yes at 52 per cent. Those precarious leads mirrored the level of Remain support in the polls immediately pre-EU referendum, which proved untrustworthy and destroyed David Cameron.

So, even in the immediate post-Brexit hysteria, Sturgeon did not have the safe lead she needed for a second independence referendum. More recently, however, she has lost that wafer-thin advantage. Another poll at the end of July showed support for independence down at 47 per cent and the latest survey reduces it to 46 per cent, just 1 per cent above the Yes vote in the 2014 referendum. Brexit has not given the SNP any boost at all.

But Sturgeon is committed to launch draft legislation for a second independence referendum next week, although she now wants a referendum like a hole in the head. So, the “conversation” with Scotland, due to end on November 30, St Andrew’s day, is a delaying ploy. Sturgeon would be insane to hold a second plebiscite: losing it would end her career and any prospect of independence for a generation.

Of course she has not the slightest intention of listening to Scots. They might raise importunate questions about an education system whose inadequacies would provoke concern in Equatorial Guinea. Sceptics suggest that asking two million people to report their views on a dedicated website will considerably assist the SNP’s election campaigning; cynics suggest that information volunteered by “anti-Party elements” (as they used to be termed in Dzerzhinsky Square) could impact their career prospects.

But the real significance of this Listening exercise by an administration with its fingers firmly in its ears is as a necessary distraction to save the face of the braggardly First Minister and postpone the nemesis of a second independence referendum. Nicola Sturgeon enjoys the advantage of leading a minority government, which gives her hope her Referendum Bill will be voted down at Holyrood, when she can indulge in much huffing and puffing about obstruction of Scotland’s supposedly glorious future under independence.

Her worst nightmare is that the unpredictable, pro-independence Greens will upset the applecart by supporting her and opening the way to a vote that would destroy the SNP.